Meet the team

Directors

Picture of Matthew Bloch
Matthew Bloch
Managing Director

Matthew Bloch
Managing Director

Matthew implemented the first version of many of the company's hosting products. With a background in software engineering roles on PC virtualization and Java virtual machine products, he now heads the team improving its many different software systems.

Peter Taphouse
Director

Peter designs our extensive core network and infrastructure. His experience growing Bytemark from a single rack to five data centres ensure calm seas and a generously over-provisioned network. Pete is a committed gastronaut — travelling the world for excellent food, an occasional pyrotechnician, and a runner.

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Patrick Cherry
Operations Director

Patrick Cherry
Operations Director

Patrick is a systems administrator and software developer with an academic background in biomedical engineering. He is responsible for overseeing our support team, as well as our internal systems administration. Symbiosis was born from his desire for an easy-to-use hosting environment without the surprises. Patrick is an everyday cyclist, choral singer, and cub scout leader.

Grahame Davies
Non-Executive Director

Grahame Davies joined Bytemark in 2012 as its first new director since the company was founded. He brings masses of experience from his founding of Demon Internet back in 1992, years as Group Managing Director of Easynet, and many other business interests including a leading sheet music download site, greatscores.com. He is also a long-distance runner.

System administration

Picture of Nathan Lasseter
Nathan Lasseter
Systems Administrator

Nathan Lasseter
Systems Administrator

Nathan graciously accepted our invitation to join Bytemark full-time in 2013 after graduating from his computer science masters degree at York, during which he spent a year in industry working at Bytemark. Nathan is another avid board and card game player and is involved in York Hack Space, often demonstrating his inventions in the office.

Picture of James Hannah
James Hannah
Systems Administrator

James Hannah
Systems Administrator

James joined us at the start of 2012 to bring his varied Linux experience to our managed customers. He's a Mancunian with experience in student radio, and loves cycling and home-brewing.

Pete Foster
Systems Administrator

Pete Foster hails from an IT security background, with knowledge of pen testing and vulnerability research. After a short stint as a Certified Apple professional, he joined Bytemark's support team, looking after our self-managed customers. In his spare time, he likes to repair, collect and play vintage video games and enjoys flying aircraft big and small.

Picture of James Lawrie
James Lawrie
Systems Administrator

James Lawrie
Systems Administrator

James has worked on web and database systems for years, and from his time at both Netcraft and UKFast knows exactly what our customers want. He has a great mix of programming and system administration experience, and joined us in May 2011 to develop our internal systems and answer our customers' hard questions.

Paul Rose
Systems Administrator

Paul joined us in 2012 straight from the University of Keele, where he graduated with a first-class degree in Computer Science. During his time there he rebuilt the student radio station Kube radio as well as providing technical support for the listening service Keele Nightline. Paul is an excellent addition to our technical support team.

Telyn Roat
Systems Administrator

Telyn is a recent graduate of York University and an independent musician and producer. Equally at home with a wrench and screwdriver as with a keyboard and mouse, she loves cycling, bouldering, stilt-walking and board games. Team cat.

Picture of Steven Raith
Steven Raith
Systems Administrator

Steven Raith
Systems Administrator

Steven has a varied career spanning front-line ISP helpdesks to sysadmin for national government. His interest in understanding how everything works stretches from computing and networking, to unrealistic ambitions in car maintenance to (slightly) more realistic ambitions in DSLR cameras. He is agnostic on the dog/cat debate.

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Steve Kemp
Systems Administrator

Steve Kemp
Systems Administrator

Steve is a former Debian developer and creator of the excellent Debian administration website. Steve has been with us since 2006 and overhauled many of our original hosting products. He now focuses on delivery to our managed hosting customers and is an accomplished photographer.

Infrastructure

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Mike Poland
Data Centre Engineer

Mike Poland
Data Centre Engineer

Mike joined us in March 2014 from 34SP where he was one of their main support engineers and helped maintain the data centre. He's a big fan of football, computer games and a lover of all things beer.

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Tom Hill
Network Engineer

Tom Hill
Network Engineer

Tom joins us from Melbourne where he helped grow their self-managed network infrastructure through his keen interest in networking with Cisco, Linux and anything else he can get his hands on. He joined Bytemark in 2013 to help grow our network and to incorporate our new data centre in York. He's into real ale and whisky.

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Chris Cottam
Data Centre Engineer

Chris Cottam
Data Centre Engineer

Chris Cottam joined us in August 2011 to help run our data centre and fulfil orders. We are very excited about his broad experience in chemical R&D, IT services, computer recycling and roadie-ing. Chris is a keen hill-walker.

Finance & customer happiness

Picture of Rajesh Joshi
Rajesh Joshi
Head of Communications

Rajesh Joshi
Head of Communications

"Josh", as he's known to most people, joined us in August 2013 to look after our marketing and communications. Formerly of Melbourne, Josh is helping us share our technical reputation with new audiences as well as connecting better with our existing customers. Josh is an avid social cyclist and enjoys reading style guides.

Tim Dobson
Community Wrangler

Tim joined the team in November 2010 and has been blazing a trail through our managed customers, helping with both sales and implementation, so our customers get exactly what they ask for. He's also the company's contact for sponsorship and open source outreach. He cycles, he hikes, and has quite an eye for landscape photography.

Sandra Kölsch
Finance Manager

Sandra Kölsch joined us in 2012 from a wide-ranging commercial background, including aeronautics and financial management at Full Sutton prison, from where she has some excellent torch-under-the-chin camp fire tales. Her fastidiousness is proving crucial to keeping the company's finances in check as Bytemark expands.

Software development

Picture of James Carter
James Carter
Software Developer

James Carter
Software Developer

James comes to us from the University of York where he built the Computer Science department's in-house Linux distribution, terminal server and many other crucial parts of their infrastructure. He is a retro-computing enthusiast spotting computers that appear in TV and film and has run an online quiz podcast for the last nine years.

Kim Witten
Software Developer

Formerly a graphic designer from California, Kim moved to York in 2010 to complete her PhD in linguistics. Kim joined Bytemark full-time in 2014 in a new role as a developer and is currently working on our website, monitoring and reporting systems. She enjoys figuring out languages, not following recipes, camping, and poker.

Ian Chilton
Software Developer

Ian joined Bytemark in March 2014 to boost our development team. He has an unquenchable thirst for knowledge of all things technical which he's already put to good use by documenting the BigV API. His interests include DevOps, Ruby and configuration management as well as tinkering with electronics at home, sound engineering for local churches and Formula 1.

Nick Thomas
Software Developer

After graduating from the University of York in 2008 with a biology degree, Nick joined us as a sysadmin. He quickly transitioned to development on our internal systems, and has been working full-time (and full-stack) on BigV since 2011. He plays roller derby and dances a mean salsa, lindyhop, waltz, tango, foxtrot...

Picture of Steve Urmston
Steve Urmston
UX Developer

Steve Urmston
UX Developer

Steve joined Bytemark in 2014 with the brief to design and implement our user interfaces, focusing on usability. He has over a decade of experience in design and web development and an MA in Human Computer Interaction from York. Steve is a keen golfer, DJ and prefers cats.

Picture of Alex Young
Alex Young
Software Developer

Alex Young
Software Developer

After years of contracting on our internal systems, we talked Alex into moving to York full time in 2011 to work on our brilliant new hosting platform BigV. His experience with Ruby and good taste in software is exactly what we need. He plays the Ukelele, shoots arrows, and is a member of team dog (Bytemark is officially a dog company).